SeeingWithOutTheHazySmokeCalledStereotypes
by CollectionOfSeashells
Summary: Roger and Mark as teenagers and their growing relationship. T now but will be M once Mark and Roger get to know each other. Its all Johnathan Larson's work
1. Chapter 1

I've always noticed him

**Please read this, it'll help with the story.**

Its kind of a mix between the generation were in now and the generation mark and roger are in.

Its not totally into character but sorta kinda…I don't know I think it is but I'm sure you disagree.

It's a T rating for now but won't always be.

If you want me to write faster or at all please let me know that I'm not writing for me I'm writing for you--But not really I write so I can see Mark and Roger in a new stories XP

Oh yes and tell me if you disagree. Roger is not the dumb ass everyone makes him out as. He is rich and rebellious. He had everything but freedom as a child but as he got old he just couldn't take his parents crap. Mark lives in a tiny apartment with in Mom, Dad, and sister Cindy (who got pregnant at fourteen.) His dad beats him his mom acts like she could careless. (Dad beat Cindy until she popped out three baby boys.) Oh and at first it was his mom that hit him but I changed it to his dad cause in the musical him and his mom seems to have a good relationship. What do you think?

Okay Well That's All Please Get Back To Me

**Relying On Intellect Chapter One**

_I've always noticed him. I just never really saw him. Or is it that I saw him but never really noticed him? The point is right now I'm looking at Mark Cohen. Not just looking but staring. I can't take my eyes off him. I'm seeing. I'm noticing._

**Roger**

I've never been the sporty type although I'm pretty damn good. Yet it is truly rare for me to get dressed for gym. When 9th period comes I simply sit on the bleacher and watch the students dull enough to participate in the usual gym activities. I watch them complete minuet after minute of the warm up consisting of jogging around the gym, lifting weights or jump roping. They bore me. Laughing with their friends or racing their enemies. None of them are interesting to look at.

A group of preps zoom past me. They make a point to give me evil glances and I don't hesitate to raise my middle finger at the sight of them. A second later Mark Cohen slouches on after them. I wonder if he hears the teacher yelling for him to run. I wonder if he realizes he's only getting half credit for the day. That's what you get for not participating. He probably figures it better then a zero. In my eyes a zero just another coin in the pot. I watch him circle the gym. This wasn't the first time I've watched him. Every Saturday on the subway I watch him taking pictures of everything around him. I try my best to get on the same cart with him every week but I don't think he's ever noticed me. I could never find a way to go over and talk to him but I stared at him long enough to burn a hole threw his soul.

Ryan Wilder takes me out of the past as he zooms past Mark, raising his hand to give him a slap on his head and then running ahead to laugh with his friends. Mark clenches his teeth and scratches his head. Wilder is such a dick. What did he gain from that? He proved the point he could slap a head? Hell, so can I. Maybe I'll show him what we have in common later.

A whistle blows, telling the group to finish up and find a spot on the bleachers. My eyes follow Mark. He falls out of the running sequence and falls in with his group of weight lifters and rope jumpers. I recognize Eloise Parks, my ex girlfriend, and Andrew Olli, Eloise's boyfriend. The third and final member of his group is tall and cute and I know I've seen him but I cannot put a name to his face.

They sit on a set of bleachers next to me a few levels lower them me and ignore the teachers shouting the baseball. I watch them. Eloise finds a pen and her and Mark play tic tak toe on the back of the tall ones hand. Eloise wins and scribbles something on his palm. Their group reads it and laugh and then the tall one makes some perverted gestures to Marks penis. They laugh again and I struggle to hold mine in.

A whistle blows again and the teachers instruct the part of the class who actually plan on participating to line up and wait for their number. Mark and his group line up. Mark gets a one, Eloise gets a two, James gets a three, and the tall one gets a one. Everyone then heads outside and got to the correct field according to their number. Still curious about Mark I head over to field one as well. I follow behind and after a long walk we are at the field. I start to sit on a log on the side of the field but Coach Miles stops me by putting a hand on my shoulder.

"Roger, you never get dressed for gym. How come?" He asks like he gives a shit.

"Well coach Miles, unlike some people around her I acutely give a shit about my attire." I'm really not a bad kid. I normally respect my elder and I don't tease people who don't deserve it but me and Andy Miles go way back. Back to before he ever worked for West Mill High. Back to a time when my mother was banging him behind my fathers back. Since then I have lost all respect for him.

"Roger," He says pulling my name out longer then it needs to go, "you know your mother would like you to have a clean mouth."

"Yeah, my father wouldn't mind that either."

He peruses his lips and is silent for a while until some dork acutely eager to play shouts for him to pitch.

"Pitch for the team? You have such a good arm." He asks holding out the ball for me. When I don't talk it he adds, "I'd hate to give you a zero." And I'd oddly enough hate that too. Repeating gym sucks anyway. I take the ball. I know I can show him up easily. I'm ten times better at baseball then him then him. I stand in the middle on the field and start to pitch when I relies we need a third baseman.

"Mark," I yell, "Cover third." I see him suck in his cheeks and stare at the base for a moment before standing by it. I pitch the ball, catch the ball, and the other team gets an out. I continue this for three outs and then the teams switch. I play it low now. I probably seem like a hog but now that Miles has a shocked expression and red cheeks I can stop. After a while we head in and I run up to walk by Mark and the tall one.

"Sorry for making you play third." I'm not sorry. I don't really think I should be sorry. I don't think he thinks I should be sorry. I just wanted some conversation.

"I don't really care. It didn't last long and I didn't do much with you ruling the field" He laughs. He has a good laugh.

"Yeah, I'll pretty much do what ever to show Coach Miles up."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I walk in silence for a bit as the tall boy points and laughs at something only Mark could understand. Soon they quiet down and I add " I'm Roger."

"Mark." He says holding out his hand and I take it. " Haven't I seen you before?"

"Well we've been in the same school for the past three years."

"No, on the subway, every Saturday. When I take a class up in New York" He did see me.

**Mark**

After gym I head to English for last period.

_Left, right, strait, strait, left._

The science wing? Damn. Of course even on the third week of school I still don't know my way around. I turn and make my way to a map on the wall. I spot the big yellow 'you are here' bubble and make my way from there. It hard even to find the room number on a piece of paper. It doesn't help that the school in half a mile long. Fuck! This is taking far too long; the bell is going to ring any minuet! My face is hot and burning and my forehead is sweet covered and I need to not panic. The other two late slips I got were nothing unless there's a third to complete it giving me a detention, giving my dad the right to slap, hit, punch, whip, or maybe (depending on the amount of alcohol he has consumed) just yell at me.

Smooth fingertips wash my sides and rest on my hips. I twirl my head around to see who would disrupt me seconds before the bell. Once I see who I stupidly forget my panic. The twist in my stomach disappears and is replaced with a pain that I just can't get enough of.

"James?" I say with a smile that barely fits my face and a giggle of a five year old.

"Shouldn't you be in English?" He removes his hands from my waist and grabs my own hand, dragging me to class. We zoom past the few people left in the halls, passing the yelling teachers and confused janitors and arrive at English on time. Throughout the class I can hardly keep my eyes off him until Mrs. Mott brings up the pop quiz we're about to take. As soon as this happens I raise my hand and ask to go to the restroom and as soon as she says yes I not so discreetly grab my book bag and head for the restroom to read the section I 'forgot' to read last night.

It was a surprise to find the bathroom not full of the usual smokers and ditchers. Only Roger Davies sitting in the corner. His legs pulled up to his chest and his head buried in a book. Roger Davis reading a book? Not for pleasure I'm sure.

"What'cha reading?" I asked and he responded by jolting up his head, startled, hitting himself on the sink above him.

"Oh God!" I rushed over, dropping my bag on the floor and sitting on my knees at his side. Only then did I realize how funny that was. I let my laughter out, holding in my stomach. The look on his face didn't help relieve my laughter at all, only enforce it.

Rogers look of pain eased into a smile of confusion and amusement as he said, "Death by sink is positively the dullest thing to laugh at." As he talked he only received some nods from me when I realized I couldn't stop my laughter and with that he joined in.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was trying to be considerate, I was, but that look on your face!" I finally commented still laughing a bit. I bit my lip and sucked in my breath, taking myself out of my fit of laughter. Roger stopped his laughter as well and smiled a wiry smile with confused eyes. That smile wasn't his. It was a show. I shouldn't have laughed. Slowly, Roger lifted his hand to the back of his head, took a sharp in take of breath, and slowly pulled back two bloody fingers. My eyes widened and I swallowed deeply.

Roger straitened his legs and put his book down as a sat shell shocked. I hated blood. The look, the smell, everything about it made me sick and it made me sicker to know that I caused this. I've caused pain before but never to someone I don't totally hate. And I pay by feeling guilty. For me guilt is a thick weight on my chest. I know how he must be feeling. Pain is a feeling I know well but its not just the pain it's the embarrassment he feels and knowledge he knows I have. What he doesn't know is I will not use it.

For a long moment the two of us just stared wow-ed buy this new discovery. Soon Roger slowly got up as did I, both of us soundless. Him moving to the sink and me moving to my book bag. I pull out a thin black pencil case that did not hold pencils but supplies. Supplies for tending to the cuts on my wrist and the tools used to make them. I stayed crouched on the floor and Roger stood washing his hands. I held the case over my head for him to take it. I sure as hell wasn't going to stand at eye level with him just to give him a first aid kit. I didn't want to see the blood.

"Hmm?"

"Just take the case Roger." My words were fast and almost slurred. I was surprised he understood me but he took the case. I herd him unzip it and I could only assume he used the Neosporin on his head.

When he handed it back I finally got up and faced him. He smiled. I only think it was real.

"Thank you." His voice was sincere. I nodded.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have startled you and I shouldn't have laughed."

His smile grew. "Are you kidding me? It was hilarious." He got back on the floor and picked up his book, looking for his spot. "I'm reading 'Give a Boy a Gun'."

More timid this time and a little shaky, "Oh yeah? Todd Strasser right?...Yeah I read that. He's one of my favorites" I moved to the floor taking my book bag and heading for the door.

"Don't you have to take a piss?"

"I only came in here to cram for Mrs. Motts pop quiz but I don't have enough time."

"That quiz was real easy. Five questions all multiple choice.

One is B.

Two - F.

Three - A.

Four is G or H, I don't remember.

And five is G."

"Wow…wow. Thank you….a lot" I head for the door again but then stop myself and turn back to Roger. "Hey you read 'Can't Get There From Here.'?"

"No. Its Strasser though right?"

I nodded as I pulled a book from my book bag and dropped 'Can't Get There From Here' in front of him.

"Hey, thanks." He said picking it up and looking threw it.

"Give it back when you're done." And with that I left. And even though my mind is occupied, repeating the five answers over and over again in my head, I still have time to make a mental note to talk to him on the subway this weekend.

**CollectionOfSeaShells**

If you want me to write faster or at all please let me know


	2. Chapter 2

**Sorry writing this took so long and sorry it kind of sucks. **

**It's also much shorter then I wanted. **

**My drunken Roger isn't really convincing.**

**I'm not proud of this piece at all.**

**I have yet to find a beta reader so deal with my mistakes.**

**Please review**

_**Roger**_

I push the wonderful mean our fabulous cook, Wendy, made around the plate with my fork

I push the wonderful mean our fabulous cook, Wendy, made around the plate with my fork. It smells wonderful. It looks wonderful. I almost feel as if I tried to eat it I could swallow it with out being too disgusted with the little cherub mooing everyone who dares eat off of it. My mother has horrible taste in plates.

I refuse to see that cherub's a and more importantly I refuse to let my parent see me eat. It's a small game I'm playing at. For three weeks I have not ate or drank in there presence. And have they noticed? Nope. When I started this game I bet it would take a week for them to play the part of a concerned parent but I'm pretty sure they don't know there lines.

"Roger, that fine man coach Miles called today. What's this I hear about you not getting dressed for gym?" Her high pitched voice makes me wish I was five again so I could craw under the table with no shame.

"Ask dad." Saying this makes my mother shoot a pointed look my way. I knew that would shut her up. For a while later she simply stares at my father scribbling away, writing letters and making notes. Hearing the word 'dad' should at least make him acknowledge that were talking about him. Shouldn't it? Figures, dad never tunes in on our conversations.

"Honey your foods getting cold." Her voice alone makes my head ache. My fathers head too, I'm sure. "Why don't you stop working for five minuets and talk with you son and me."

He lightly drops his pen onto the glass table top and leans back in his chair. "I'm simply trying to get the work done to pay for this house excuse me for not having time to converse." He picks up chunks of stake with his bare hands and pops them into his mouth. I watch my mother breath heavily with anger. I can tell she's fighting the need to get up and teach him how to eat like a grown man.

"You have time to converse with that sectary of yours."

"I told you nothing happened!"

"Yes, yes that's what you say but it's not what you mean."

"I mean it!"

"Sure, sure."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything. But you could have been safe. Some of my girls form the gym work there and I know everything." She says with an accomplished looking smile plastered on her lips. As if she won some great battle by proving her point.

"I'm done" He fiercely throws down his pen only adding another crack to the table and begins to get up.

"Oh are you? Where are you going off to bang that slu--?"

"You don't think I know?!" His roar was so loud now that my ears actually started to ring. "You don't think I know about you ad that 'fine man" coach Miles?! Ha! With you fucking him right under my nose?! Twenty years we've been married! Twenty fucking years and for the past five years you have been bringing man after man into this house so you can...!" His breathing was heavy and tired and I knew what he was going to do next. I closed my eyes and seriously considered crawling under the table. "Until now I have said nothing, thinking I could get past it. Thinking it was all in my head. Thinking if I stay out of the house or buried in my office it would eventually slip my mind. Thinking every time I found out what you were doing it was the last time. Thinking maybe you loved me! Well I cant! Not anymore. For the record I never cheated on you and we're over." He took his work and left the room.

I look around the room and relies Samantha and Rachel, two of our maids, have been watching the seen. Mom and I were silent for a while. We herd the door open and slam shut and the car turn on and them speed away. My mother then ran out of the dinning room, her face red as red as can be but oddly enough I think it's from embarrassment not sadness.

Samantha silently clears the table. Several times she turns to me and starts to speak but stops her self each time. She walks into the kitchen with my mothers, fathers, and my own plate. None of them finished. I sure wasn't eating but my mother and father were. They aren't done. Why would she just assume no one is eating? My father will be back and when he comes he will be hungry. And my mother? Well fuck her. That bitch is the reason he has left. Temporarily. He is coming back. No matter what he says he still loves us. And if he doesn't love her he still loves me and he will come for me. If he's leavening so am I. Even if he doesn't always notice me. I know he still loves me and he will take me away from this place. And Sam can't just take our food away without even saying a word.

I walk into the kitchen planning to tell Sam to put the food back but when I herd my own stomach growl I just headed over to our desert cake on the table and dug in.

"Now child, is that really necessary?" Wendy appears next to me.

My mouth is full of icing. My head aches even from the simple sound of her soft voice. I try to ignore her. I can't talk right now. Neither because of my mouth full of icing nor the scorching ache in my head that reacts to every sound I hear but because of the anger inside me. I'm so angry at everything and everyone. I have to get away.

"Honey, I know you're hurting-" I grab a towel and run out the door. Wiping away the cake from my hands and mouth I run down the street past the biggest houses in the neighborhood and oddly enough even with all this shit going on I can't seem to think about anything but the fact that I'm still hungry.

I run and run for at least twenty minutes until I'm out of the houses I grew up around. Until I am no longer near the snobs I grew up with. Until I'm in a town I never saw until I was sixteen, even though it's hardly a mile away. I step into a crowded club filled with druggies and alcoholics and sluts and assholes and just about everyone someone pure might be scared of. Mark would be scared. Mark would be terrified. I watch him. I see him cower when he walks between groups of kids he knows better then to stare to hard at or he might be on the ground later. Marks pure and tiny and scared.

I know Mark. I've hardly ever spoke to him but I watch him. I hear his conversations. For the most part he is smart. I can tell he's very by the book. He's always home on time. Always has his way. Rich no doubt. He treats his parents with respect and they treat him with just as much back. He is a virgin, hardly past first kiss. He's a good boy. Having his personality spread out in front of me makes m ask myself what I like about him. What interests me so much about him?

I don't need to look too hard to find April. She's on the dance floor as always. Dancing with at least five different men. I watch her. I watch her take one by the shoulder to pull him close enough to rub her knee agents the bulge in his pants and then turn around to kiss the women who was rubbing against her back. I take her arm and pull her out of the crowd.

"What the fuck, Roger?" She struggles to get back to her men and woman. I roughly collide my lips with her. I know she's only here for some ass and so am I.

She pulls away. "Roger, I can have you any night I want but tonight I don't want you. I want her." she shyly admits nodding her head to the girl waiting for her. I clench my jaw. I understand but I'm still angry we only get together on her terms. I need someone to control right now.

I distantly hear her explaining but I don't care. I need something, someone to pull this feeling away. April is my best friend and although she is nothing more then my friend she is the only girl I know who can really talk the sting of loneliness away. Any other girl could do the same with acts of seduction but they wouldn't be much of a talker when it was all over.

I practically bite off my lip to make this dissuasion but I decide to find relief in something other then women. I walk away from her making my way to the bar. I don't need ass tonight but beer would be nice. Anything to get my mind off them.

I flash my fake ID at the bar tender and he gives me a pint. I never liked the taste of beer but this is what I'm supposed to do, right? When you're sad you drink and it makes everything okay, right? Right.

I down my beer and ask for another and then I down that too and ask for more. The third is gone in no time and I can hardly feel my feet. I fall off my bar stool and put my self into hysterical laughter. Someone asks if I'm alright. I ignore them. Do I look alright? No.

I don't know how but now I'm on the dance floor and there's April and that girl practically humping each other. I make my way over to them stumbling all the way.

"Oh April, May, November!"

"Roger, are you alright?" Why is everyone obsessed with that question?

"I'm fine." I grab her arms and wrap them around my waist, ignoring her struggling and pleas for me to back the fuck off.

"What the hell it wrong with you? Let her go!" Her lady friend finally talks and I obey.

"Roger are you drunk?" April yells to me.

"Just one beer. Not even one. Like a quart." When she turns away I grab her hand. "April you love me don't you? You wouldn't leave me ever! Right?"

"Go home, Roger." April and her 'friend' walks away leaving me alone. I can dance solo. I don't need them. I jump up and down until my stomach hurts. I know I drank too much. I'm already starting to feel most of this little high turn to a small pain in my head. I don't know why I do this to myself. I should have just gotten laid or even do what Mark obviously loves.

I stop jumping and find a seat on the ground outside the club. My hand reaches for the cut on the back of my head where I had hit my head on the bathroom sink. Marks face had changed so quickly that day. He always had the same joy filled face when he was with his friends. A face I know he can only bare with his friends. In the bathroom he went from hysterical laughter to worry and guilt and disgust to a clam and relaxing face.

I don't know why I didn't confront him about what I saw in his case. Neosporin, aspirin, bandages, and blades. Even a few bloody tissues. I'm not stupid. I know what they were for. I should have said something. I should have yelled at him for being so stupid. What has he got to be sad about? That's what inertest me about him. That little part of me, a voice in the back of me head, is telling me there's more to him then I know. I don't know him, not at all but for some odd reason I want to.

How could he cut himself? I feel so angry at him and sad for him and selfish for thinking I have it bad when I'm not the one with a blade to my wrist.

For a while I thought I was sobering up but I'm not. If I was sober I wouldn't let myself think about such things. Drinking is supposed to make me feel better not worse. I'll stick to sex to cheer me up from now on.

I find myself being oddly anxious for Saturday. Anxious to see Mark. Anxious to ask him why.


End file.
